Food news

• Make tourists pay for London museums | Letters

  15-01-2017 19:34 via theguardian.com
  
  Cultural charges | So to start a sentence | John Lee Hooker | How to eat WeetabixWith the decline in the value of the pound and subsequent increase in the number of tourists coming to Britain (Report, 13 January), London galleries and museums should start charging them (Former MP backtracks on abolishing free entry, 14 January). A system whereby British taxpayers can enter for free while tourists pay, as in Italy, would certainly satisfy those who rarely get the opportunity to visit London to se
  
  Read more

• Welcome to the first OFM of 2017

  15-01-2017 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  This month, we bring you classic Italian recipes from Marcella Hazan, the rebirth of Noma, and New York chef Dan Barber’s crusade to end waste in the food industryWhen we finish photographing the food for this magazine, we eat it. The crew, usually three of us, sit in my office-studio, and tuck into whatever we have just photographed. Anything shot after lunch is commandeered for dinner or taken home in doggy bags. The rest becomes my food for the week. You could measure my life in the reh
  
  Read more

• Welcome to Lombardi's, America's oldest pizzeria

  15-01-2017 13:00 via theguardian.com
  
  In Little Italy, the godfather of New York pizza joints serves up no-nonsense ‘slices of history’ (no pineapple or tandoori chicken toppings here) from an old coal-fired ovenThere are almost 75,000 pizzerias in the US, and the granddaddy of them all is Lombardi’s, an unassuming place opened more than a century ago at 32 Spring Street, in New York’s Little Italy. Its coal-fired oven, installed in the early 1900s, produces a chewy, blistered crust markedly different from th
  
  Read more

• Laurie Anderson: ‘I see Lou all the time. He’s a continued, powerful presence’

  15-01-2017 12:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Over seitan and tofu in New York, the avant-garde performance artist talks about her Buddhism and loss and love – for her mother and her late husband Lou ReedLong after she’s left, I’ll still be thinking about Laurie Anderson’s pumpkin-coloured jacket. I see it through the window of the restaurant, this big daub of colour amid all the greys and blacks of a New York winter. Then that colour is inside and here, emerging from it, is Laurie Anderson – 69 years old, smal
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• ‘Restaurants have taught me who I am’

  15-01-2017 11:30 via theguardian.com
  
  From work breakfasts with her editor to arguments over oysters with an ex-boyfriend, eating out has been an education for novelist Kathleen AlcottClick here to get the Guardian and Observer for half priceYou can tell everything about a person, says a common piece of wisdom, by how he or she treats the waiter. It’s a dependable and convenient yardstick, given how the bistro tables and corner booths are, very often, the places where we decide upon whom we let into our lives – acquainta
  
  Read more

• Dan Barber’s long-term mission: to change food and farming for ever

  15-01-2017 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  America’s philosopher chef won over a president to his vision of sustainability. And now he’s bringing it to BritainClick here to get the Observer and the Guardian for half priceFour or five mornings a week Dan Barber drives out from his home in Manhattan to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, his celebrated restaurant in the Pocatino Hills, north of New York. On a good day the journey takes just under an hour. Barber, 47, is America’s pre-eminent philosopher chef. He has the reed-thin r
  
  Read more

• A day in the life of Scott’s, Britain’s grandest restaurant

  15-01-2017 10:30 via theguardian.com
  
  At Scott’s in Mayfair, the VIP diners arrive with bodyguards and the kitchen spends £45,000 on fresh fish every week. Jay Rayner goes behind the scenesClick here to get the Observer and the Guardian for half priceIt doesn’t matter how glamorous the performance; backstage is never pretty. At a little after seven on a weekday morning the chaos of backstage at Scott’s in Mayfair has expanded on to the pavement of Mount Street outside. Yesterday’s linen, bundled up in r
  
  Read more

• Grenache, the toughest grape in the world

  15-01-2017 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  It survives in inhospitable terrain and its wines are too often undervalued. So try a few of these …Grape vines of all kinds can cope with the most extraordinarily difficult and extreme environments. But few varieties of this tenacious plant are as tough as grenache, aka garnacha in Spain. It can survive, even thrive, in some of the dustiest corners of the wine world, roots plunged many feet deep into inhospitable terrain seeking out moisture.The wonder of grenache is that the meagre crop
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Anthony Bourdain: ‘I put aside my psychotic rage, after many years being awful to cooks’

  15-01-2017 09:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The chef and author on encountering vichyssoise aged nine, practical jokes with his sous chef, and learning to take food less seriouslyClick here to get the Observer and the Guardian for half priceI worked in a restaurant where the house speciality was mutton chops, so everything reeked of fat, penetrating every pore, follicle and piece of clothing, as if I’d been rolling around in sheep guts. It was the first thing I smelled in the morning and the last at night. But I didn’t have an
  
  Read more

• René Redzepi on Noma’s last supper – and what comes next

  15-01-2017 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The decade’s greatest restaurant will serve its final meal next month. Head chef René Redzepi talks about his new restaurant that will again revolutionise cooking – Noma 2.0Click here to get the Observer and the Guardian for half priceOn the night in 2009 when his restaurant reached No 3 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, René Redzepi’s thoughts turned to aviation. “It was a great moment,” he recalls. “But it also felt like that momen
  
  Read more

• The 50 best breakfast places in the UK

  15-01-2017 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Breakfasts in Britain are among the best in the world. Here – region by region – are the very finest places to start your day Continue reading...
  
  Read more

• Nigel Slater’s aubergine ragu with cream and parmesan lentils recipe

  15-01-2017 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Good everyday cooking is often a matter of scrabbling together something tasty from what you’ve gotIt never occurs to me not to cook. Putting a meal together for myself is as much a part of my day as getting out of bed in the morning. The alternatives are delicious, I’m sure: a phoned-for pizza in a box the size of coffee table; sushi by the trayful – a jewel box of raw fish and shiso leaves; a supermarket korma on the table in a minute. But the truth is that the idea never cro
  
  Read more

• Jihwaja, London: restaurant review | Jay Rayner

  15-01-2017 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Thoroughly modern Jihwaja, a new Korean joint, brings Jay out in raptures for its fabulously ‘filthy’ fried chickenJihwaja, 353 Kennington Lane, London SE11 5QY (020 7582 4680). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £50What would it take to elevate the humble Greggs steak bake from mass-produced, nutritionally enthusiastic, brilliant-when-you’re-drunk-even-better-when-you’re-hungover food-on-the-go option, to hipster fetish object? I suspect the answer is abou
  
  Read more

• Savouring the wines of southwest France | David Williams

  15-01-2017 06:59 via theguardian.com
  
  The southwest of France is home to a group of disparate and idiosyncratic wine growers and makers. Here are three very different bottles worth hunting out
  Domaine Rotier Les Gravels Gaillac, France 2012 (£11.45, Berry Bros & Rudd) Bounded to the west by the starchy grandees of Bordeaux, and to the southeast by the great engine-room of French wine, the Languedoc-Roussillon, the cluster of disparate, individualistic appellations known collectively as South West France sometimes struggle
  
  Read more

• Our next Scandi import: organic ‘folk food’ for all

  15-01-2017 01:05 via theguardian.com
  
  EU pledges £9m to help Britain turn niche market mainstreamNever mind hygge, the new Danish buzzword is folkeligt and it’s going to give Britain’s organic food industry a Scandi makeover.Organic supremos in both nations are drawing up plans for a charm offensive after securing €10.4m (£9m) from the EU to turbocharge industry growth. Britons spend only a tiny portion of their food budget on organics, and the marketing push aims to bring them into line with the Danes,
  
  Read more

Follow @FoodUKnews on Twitter!